Facelifts, Ageing and Looking Like Yourself with Dr Jeremy Hunt

What really happens during a facelift?
And why are more women quietly moving away from endless fillers and toward surgery?

In this honest and deeply informative conversation, I sit down with plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr Jeremy Hunt to unpack the modern facelift conversation and why the approach to facial ageing has changed so dramatically over the years.

We discuss everything from mini facelifts, deep plane facelifts and neck lifts to downtime, scars, recovery and what actually creates natural looking results. Dr Hunt also explains why today’s women are no longer chasing a dramatically different face, but instead wanting to look fresher, healthier and still like themselves.

This episode goes beyond surgery. It’s also a conversation about confidence, ageing, self perception and the emotional side of wanting to still feel good in your own skin as the years go on.

Whether you’re simply curious, quietly considering surgery yourself, or wanting to better understand the modern world of aesthetics, this conversation offers a grounded and balanced perspective without fear, hype or judgment.

Where to Find Dr Jeremy Hunt

https/://www.drjeremyhunt.com.au 

Longevity Clinics Australia
Instagram: @longevityclinicsau

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who may enjoy the conversation and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps support the show and these important conversations.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Inside Out Connections, where we explore the link between your skin, your gut, emotional health, and your deeper sense of self. I'm your host, Tracy Ann, a wellness coach exploring what it really means to reconnect from the inside out. Today's conversation is one so many women are curious about, yet often feel unsure how to talk about it openly. As we age, our faces change. Skin changes, facial structure changes, the neck softens, jowls appear. And for many women, there comes a point where they begin wondering: when is enough enough with treatments? And when does surgery become the better option? Dr. Jeremy Hunt is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon who has spent years working in facial aesthetics and surgery. In this episode, we're talking specifically about facelifts, what they are and who they're for, and how modern facelifts have evolved and what women really need to know before considering one. This is an honest, grounded conversation around aging, aesthetics, and how to navigate this space without losing yourself in the process. Dr. Jeremy Hunt, welcome back. I'm so pleased to have you back here today to talk about all things facelifts.

SPEAKER_04 1:20

Thanks, Tracy. Pleasure to be back. And uh hopefully we can have a nice discussion and clear up some of the confusion around a very common procedure.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Absolutely. And you know, it's so funny. I went for a coffee the other day with my husband, and there was a group of women at a table. They'd probably be in their late 60s, early 70s, and they were discussing facelifts. It was quite loud. They were talking about who do you think's had it done, and they were talking about all these celebrities. And I think it's often a taboo subject with a a lot of women. We don't like openly discussing it because I just think there's this sort of aspect where it's like it's shallow or we're not accepting ourselves as we age or blah, blah, blah. But there is a genuine intrigue across the board of all ages, I feel.

SPEAKER_04 2:07

I mean, you never want to ask a woman her age or her weight, and no one wants to admit they've had some sort of elective surgical procedure. But the awareness of what's around and the understanding of options is just increasing. So more people are discussing it, more kidded people are considering it. And it's one of those of trying to work out the facts through the fiction of everything you see online. And social media has led to this awareness where people do know what's out there and they do know what's available, and they're asking asking questions.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Do you think women are approaching aging differently now compared to 10 or 20 years ago?

SPEAKER_04 2:49

I I do. I think that uh quality of life has become a priority for all of us. And part of part of quality of life is one, being healthy, but feeling good about things. People are giving more consideration to options, people are exploring ideas, and there are there's a much better understanding in the community, and there's a lot more procedures available. It's just a case of making the right decision for the right person, I think, at the right time.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Because I feel like it's not for women like me at 50, it's not about looking younger. It's more about being a better version, right? Like l looking more fresh or healthier or less tired or sort of matching matching how you're feeling, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 3:33

100%. So I think maybe maybe maybe in the past there was a bit of a tendency to walk out looking like you'd had something done. Uh maybe that sort of Hollywood concept of, oh, she's had this done. But at this time, people don't want to look like different people. People just want to look like a fresher well, fresh is really the key, fresher, younger version of themselves. And they don't want to be noticed for having had something done. They just want to be noticed for all the right reasons, not the wrong reasons.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Yeah. You look well, you look fresh. Absolutely. Have you been sleeping well, eating well? Not like, holy shit, have you had a facelift?

SPEAKER_04 4:12

Yeah, totally. Totally.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Yeah. So do you think we're steering away from fillers and Botox and leaning more towards surgery? Like, what are your thoughts on that? That's my vibe across how it was, say, five to ten years ago with the fillers. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_04 4:27

Well, I think I think fillers, fillers and Botox, they're great tools. Uh surgery is a great tool. And then the aging process is a bit of a spectrum. So in you know, 30s and 40s, uh, the right tool to get the job done might be Botox and fillers. But then there's a point where, with the aging process, that's not the best tool to get the job done necessarily. And the trap is to keep trying to hammer the nail in with the screwdriver when it's time to put the screwdriver away, reach for the hammer, and do the job properly. So that in my practice, Botox and fillers have a big, big place, but it's it's the case of the right tool for the right person at the right time.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Are women becoming more educated now about what actually causes facial aging?

SPEAKER_04 5:17

Oh, absolutely. I think it's great.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

It's everywhere.

SPEAKER_04 5:20

Yeah, it's it's everywhere. There's nothing as good as and as pleasurable to deal with as an educated patient. So patients who know, have an understanding, will then have an appreciation of which procedure will get which result. They have an understanding potentially of the limitations of some of the procedures, what the outcome's going to be. So all the information that's out there is fantastic. It's just there's a lot there is a lot of information. And the information channels we have now, they are wide and they are deep, and there are many of them, so that people can head down YouTube, people can head on Instagram, people can head down the internet. And they will come across things that they may think is the answer for them, but they won't really know until they speak to someone who has an understanding of all of the options who can then say, you know what, although this seems the right plan, this plan is a better idea for you. And I think that's the that's the key to that's the key to surgery. Surgery is not about an operation. It's about, you know, discussion with the patient, patient having understanding. It's it's the journey from the first time they inquire on the internet all the way through to 12 months after the operation to ensure that along the way they get the experience that you know they deserve and the outcome they're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

And w what would make it easier is having good quality skin, right? And not having a face full of fillers, I would imagine. If you're going in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:50

So you know, the things that make our job easy is a clean slate. So if you have good quality skin with minimum sun damage, uh then you're a great candidate. You're off to a flying start. So things like a lot of sun damage, smoking, they're always things that we need to sort of sit up before the procedure and discuss the limitations that those problems then provide in terms of the outcome. Uh a lot of use of, as I say, fillers and Botox, great tool, but a lot of use of those can be problematic. A lot of use of some of the energy devices that are around that will use heat to tighten skin. Tightening up skin can be.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

Can you give me an example example of what that is? Just to make sure I haven't had it.

SPEAKER_04 7:38

Well, yeah, it's always it's always dangerous. Uh brand brand names. But uh use radio frequency, let's say. So radio frequency and heat is great if you if I say to the patients, it's like if you throw a steak onto a barbecue, it will shrink. If you throw an egg on the frying pan, it'll shrink. If you hit collagen, it will shrink. Uh that's great. But you don't want to shrink your steak to the point where it's a crispy piece of cardboard. So that um a little bit of energy device can be useful. But if someone has just kept using the same tool again and again, it can create problems for us when it comes to scarring and surgery. So a clean a clean slate, a healthy slate gives us the best chance to create the best result we can.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Interesting. So why do some women age more dramatically through the lower face and neck more than others?

SPEAKER_04 8:36

I think well, uh there's there's going to be a little bit of a racial tendency to it. There's a genetic component to it. So um if you do if you do look at your mother, potentially you will head down a similar path genetically, um, which can be encouraging, it can be disturbing. I think that um we live in a great country with uh great sunshine. Problem is sunshine high UV exposure, northern European blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin not built for the Australian sun, means that all of the stuff we did, particularly when we were kids, has some sort of carry-on into those later years in terms of loss of elasticity in the skin. So that um different races will age in different ways, different families will age in different ways. And then the things that you have environmentally subjected your skin and body to will affect it. So smoking is obviously very, very bad for skin. A good diet is good for skin, a good skin routine is good for skin. And then the use of, you know, a good skincare program is is imperative to minimize and try and reverse the damage from the past and then prevent ongoing damage to the skin.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Is there a right age for a facelift?

SPEAKER_04 9:50

Uh that's a good question. So I think the right age is everyone's gonna have a trigger point. Everyone's gonna have a a moment where they're gonna look in the mirror and just go, right, you know, that's it. I'm I'm off to get some information. And I think that trigger point comes for different people at different times. So when I'm sitting down with someone, the priority is going to be what is what is your primary concern? What is it that you don't like the look of? And then we'll discuss the options to try and address it. So for some people, the problem in their 30s is the same problem that people might have in their 50s and 60s. So although 50 is sort of deemed as this pivotal point where you move from non-surgical to surgical, there will be times where the right the right tool to solve the problem in someone in their 30s is going to be some sort of surgical procedure. And if it's on the face, it's likely to be some sort of facelift because the other tools are just not going to get the job done. They're not the right tool to fix that particular problem in that particular person. So I think it's when when someone looks in the mirror on a frequent enough basis and it's causing them enough concern to want to go and ask the question, then they just need to be informed as to the options. And whether they go ahead at that point or they go, you know what, thanks for the information. I'm now crystal clear. I'm sitting tight for five years. I'm like, that's fantastic. Sit tight for five years. Uh. See you in five years' time, and we'll have the same conversation.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

And that's why I think this podcast today is really helpful. Just for those people that are curious and just have those questions. I think it's just really good to make an informed decision with the information that you have.

SPEAKER_04 11:33

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

But are women seriously having them in their 30s?

SPEAKER_04 11:38

Uh there will be times, very, very uncommon, where, you know, for various so let's just say the face comes in different layers. We have skin on the outside, we then move down to a layer of fat that's incorporated into a layer of the muscles, and below that will be the underlying bone structure. So there may be occasions where there's not enough structural support from the bone to support the soft tissue, which then leads to soft tissue dropping earlier than it would in someone with a more robust bone structure. So they're the candidates who you will consider whether a surgical procedure is going to be beneficial or not. So it's not common and it's very selective, and it needs it's not something someone would go into lightly or flippantly, but it may, on occasions, be the best way forward for that patient.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

And I believe as well, like when you go to the gym and you're training and you're you're doing things to make your biceps bigger, for example, there are things that we can do just help the muscle laxicity in our face. Do you agree? I mean, obviously there's only so much you can do, but just help extended.

SPEAKER_04 12:48

So if you're exactly right. If you think that uh your core, your core, your abdomen looks good because you've got tone in your abdominal muscles, then the same applies to the arms, the same applies to the face. So maintaining tone in those muscles is is definitely going to be beneficial.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

And if you're stressed in your jaw and your neck and that sort of dragging down, pulling the fascia down, that'll that all make sense to me. There are things that you can do so you're not having facelifts in your 30s.

SPEAKER_04 13:18

Yeah, 100% wrong. We want to we want to try and avoid doing facelifts in 30s. We want to try and honestly, the the trick to this is is you really want to you really want to ride the non-surgical train as long as you can, and then get that tool out when the time's right.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Are there ever any patients you say no to?

SPEAKER_04 13:40

Yeah, always. Always. Yeah. So there's a bit of a saying in surgery that the good surgeon knows when not to operate. Uh, and when not to operate is when when surgery is not in the patient's best interest. Professionally, if someone makes a proposal to me about, you know, doing a procedure and I hand on heart think that this is not in that patient's interest, then that's the way the conversation heads. It's a conversation about, you know, I I honestly do not think that this is in your best interest. And you may not like what I'm about to tell you, but it's because I care and I want you to have good quality of life. So you can take my advice or not, but honestly, I don't think this is for you. I'm hopeful that people will listen to that discussion. And maybe if they seek the opinion of enough practitioners who think the same way, they'll start to hear the same message, and maybe they'll think, you know what, ten out of ten surgeons can't be wrong on this one. I think maybe I need to reconsider, you know, my position.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Talk to me about mini facelifts. What's the difference between a mini and a full?

SPEAKER_04 14:48

So the thing about a mini is it sounds so appealing. If it's if it's mini, it's got to be you know smaller. Smaller, quicker, lesser, faster.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Less downtime.

SPEAKER_04 14:58

Let the all of those things cheaper. 100%. So the problem with mini the mini anything is that the mini anything is going to be less effective than the full. It's going to not last as long as the full. The recovery will be quicker. And then it's just matching the patient's expectations as to which procedure is going to get which result. So I I'm cautious about terms like mini and quick and lunchtime and things like that, because they all infer that it's going to be a lesser procedure, which often it is, and if it is a lesser procedure, it's not going to last as long.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

It'll be lesser results.

SPEAKER_04 15:37

It'll be a lesser result. And although you know a procedure might be able to present, here's a result of my mini facelift, here's one out of a hundred patients. And that one is the best one I've got, and that patient's happy, but 99 of them may be very unhappy. So it's about m meeting expectations and matching the procedure. But it does make it very appealing from a marketing point of view to call it mini or lunchtime or super fast recovery technique or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

It's almost like a like a first step, isn't it? It's like, oh, if I'm just going to dip my toe in rather than going to the extreme, maybe I could do that. And that might tie me over for five to ten five, ten years, maybe, and then I'll get the full one. So I think perhaps that's the the women's rationale, maybe because they're fearful of not looking like themselves if they go in and get the thing. 100%. So with the mini, to be clear, is that just skin and not muscle?

SPEAKER_04 16:34

Often it is skin and not muscle. So interesting that you you you say it'll just tide me over five to ten years. So the qu the big burning question out there, there's many different types of techniques of facelift, and which one in our industry, the hot debate is which one gets the best result and lasts the longest time.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:51

So y we can talk about techniques, but there's something called the deep plane facelift, which is very widely publicized, said to by many be the best the best option, the most natural, the longest lasting. So the you know, there was a study just published in one of our journals that looked at the duration of the deep plane facelift. The Rolls-Royce, the top of the line option, and when you say maybe a mini will get me five or ten years, a deep plane facelift will get you ten point two years.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 17:20

So anything, yeah anything less than that is gonna be mini.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_04 17:25

So I do tend to say to patient, skin is skin's elastic. So you think pregnant woman's tummy, you put tension on skin, the skin will tend to let go. If I put tension on skin and pull it, it's gonna want to tend to let go. And you think how far does a woman's tummy go in nine months of pregnancy under tension? Yeah, that mini skin-only facelift is not gonna last nine months. It might last a few months.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Gotcha. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:55

There's the problem. Is that as appealing as it sounds, it has its limitations.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Gotcha. And so deep plane facelifts, are they the same as the vertical facelifts that I'm seeing all over Instagram at the moment?

SPEAKER_04 18:10

Yeah, it's it's uh it's the interesting thing. It didn't I didn't patent the term vertical facelift, but boy oh boy, it's like these guys have caught onto the concepts that it's it's pretty straightforward, really. Gravity goes down, so the solution to the problem is to go up. Uh don't go backwards. Backwards looks like a wind tunnel. So all of these all of these techniques are about moving vertically upward. And someone's just come up with the idea of calling it the vertical facelift. I'm like, that's pretty clever, because that's what we've all been doing, but it took someone to label it as their technique. I think the tricks at the moment is that in the past there has been a tendency to pull more on skin and tend to pull backwards, which creates that look. That kind of joker look. Because then there's a tension point at the corner of the mouth, and as you're going backwards, everything else sort of falls over the top. Uh and there's a few famous celebrities around who have got that said look. There's been a lot of discussion recently about that look and some people's disappointment with the results. I think the tendency now is to want to, yeah, to go vertically. If gravity is down, then the solution is upwards.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Does that mean you're pulling up into the hairline rather than behind the ears?

SPEAKER_04 19:25

Yes. And then it becomes a question of how do we get in there to then go upwards. So if you're trying to go upwards, you need to come from above. So we're coming from above in the hairline potentially. We don't want the ear to go upwards or backwards. So then there's some sort of incision often in front of the ear, because you don't want to pull the ear backwards or upwards with the skin. And that's where we get into there's probably a spectrum of about five or six different facelifts that I will do, depending on patient's age, type of skin, where the problem is. And we literally I sit down with patients and much to their disappointment, I actually score them. I score you on how bad one to five this fold is or the corner of the mouth is and this jail is and what the next like. And then in my algorithm, I will then go, okay, it scoring these points, this is the procedure of choice to get you what you want. These are the upsides or these are the potential downsides. And then any movement off that is going to come at some sort of compromise in terms of the result, the duration, the effectiveness. And I'm flexible. I'm with you as long as you're making an informed decision. So I will give people options and give them time to go and consider the options. Quite often they'll come back multiple times because they'll go and see multiple practitioners who'll say, No, this is what you need. I'm like, well, come back and I'll discuss why I don't think this is the solution to your problem. And so by the time we get to the surgical part, it's a it's a joint decision on which procedure is the right one. Then it's a joint decision on the timing, and then there's a lot of information about recovery, and then then we move down the line to get the result that I think will be the best result possible.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

I mean, it's a big deal, isn't it? It's such I I'm just imagining myself going through that process. It is. You want to you understand how women go around and get different opinions and it's their face, right?

SPEAKER_04 21:22

It's like buying a car, except about 10 times more complicated.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Exactly. Yeah. You know, and oh it's like buying a house. You have to live in it, right? So you have to l live in the face and the results. So you you want to make sure you're making that right decision. So can someone just do the lower face and the neck instead of the full face? Can you do it in steps? Like I know people talk about the lip lift. So could you do a lip lift and then maybe another time you do a neck lift and then another time you do a lower face? Like, is that can you do it? Is that bad? Is it better to do it all at once?

SPEAKER_04 21:59

No, it's better. To do it the way you want to do it. So the way you want to do it is the right way for you to do it. And then how so I tend to sit down and I break the face up into thirds. There's the top third, which is brow lifts and eyelids, then the middle third's really the face, and then the lower third's the neck. And if someone's primary concern is I don't like my little waddly neck, then we're talking about neck lifts. And then I'm I'm inclined to want people to get a result that lasts long enough that they're not back in 12 months' time thinking about doing something else. So then the discussion moves from, okay, if the next the primary objective, I would hate to see you back in a year going, okay, now this is the primary objective. Maybe we're better off just combining the two and then I would envisage that's good for 10 years. So I like to do things that in my mind are good for 10 years and go, all right, so I will see you again in ten years if that's where we're at, but I don't want you popping in every year for the next ten years having a different procedure because there's downtime. And downtime for people is often the most expensive commodity because any surgical procedure will take you out of the loop for about two weeks. So if people have got careers or people have got kids and they've got lots of family commitments, going out of the loop for two weeks is a is a high price to pay. So if you're going to go out of the loop, you want to get something that's going to do you for the duration. But yeah, you can definitely break things down into sections. People are somewhat daunted by the said full facelift. It's the cocktail of procedures that's going to get you the result that you want is the facelift for you. And it may involve something that another patient didn't need. So we do put things together in different recipes to get people's specific concerns addressed.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Wow. It's I find it all right uh fascinating. Um have facelift techniques changed significantly over the years? We've spoken about the vertical gone from being sort of tight to going up. Is there any other significant changes, would you say, in how surgeries have been?

SPEAKER_04 24:11

Yeah, I think that uh you know facelift kicked off in the 1970s with a surgeon in Sweden who s came up with this concept, self-taught himself this operation, uh and published published a book on it. And the years went by, and as as we got more and more understanding of the layers of the face and the way, you know, skin and the fat pads and muscles move together, it turns out that the guy who published the first book in the 1970s was he was on the money. He was he was the guy. And the conclusion at the moment is that it's not so much about pulling on the skin, it's more about moving the deep structures. So if you move the deep structures, the skin just comes with you, and then there's no tension on the skin, so the skin then can't stretch, and the scar can't stretch, and we end up with fine-line scars that people can't see. Right. So that philosophy of moving deeper tissues in combination with moving upwards, not backwards, is probably the basis of modern modern facelift surgery. And then even amongst that, there's probably four or five very valid techniques that will create excellent results in the hands of different surgeons. And it really comes down to, you know, there are many master chefs around, and the master chefs will use different ingredients to create spectacular meals. But if you try and get one master chef to cook with the other guy's frying pan or ingredients, it's it's not happening. So too many chefs, totally. So one technique may be said to be better than another technique, but in one person's hands that may not necessarily be the case. So we all get very good at the technique we choose to use, and that's why you see so much, so much of a wide spectrum of options out there is there are different, subtly different philosophies, and there are many, you know, many international meetings in all around the world where there are many hot and heavy heated debates by different camps about which operations the best, and then some of that washes into social media, and then some of that gets washed over here and a bit over there. And the thing about media is they love they love a good catch, a good byline, so that someone might be having a conversation and one little word will be snippet cut out, and then it becomes gospel. And that can create a few problems out there for us.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

The word that you just said before was subtle. And I think subtle is what we want as women, right? We want we want it to be subtle, but we want it to last.

SPEAKER_04 26:56

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

So is that possible to have being a facelift. No, okay, not with the mini.

SPEAKER_04 27:02

Done. Okay, so okay, but with the deep plane.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

So so just to be sure, so deep plane is a Rolls Royce. Then you've got and that's a full facelift.

SPEAKER_04 27:12

Well, no, it's said to be. So I think I think the brief is in in my practice, the brief is pretty simple. Uh you've got a concern and you want me to address it. And then my brief is that you walk into a room at the end of it, looking like a younger, fresher version of yourself, and potentially no one knows you've done something, and definitely everyone's too scared to ask the question. That's the brief. And then how I choose to do it is I will then take the face down into the thirds, identify whether it's your top eyelids and your neck, or maybe it's the bottom eyelids and your gels, and then put together cocktails of different procedures to come up with your specific operation that then we do once and we do it properly, and we do it in a real hospital, and we do it safely, and then we get a result that my aim is to hit that brief. That you walk into the room at the end of this and you look like a younger, fresher version of yourself, not like a different person. And everyone's a little bit scared to ask you, but everyone's sort of quietly going, My God, Tracy's looking so good. What's what's what's she done? That that's the key. And then if if that involves a mini lift or a smash lift or a stitch lift or a deep lift.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

What's a smat a smath what what's a smath lift?

SPEAKER_04 28:32

Okay, and we're gonna do a basic course in anatomy, this would be good. So you you literally go in layers.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:38

So you've got skin on the outside, and then underneath that is the the choppy layer that contains the fat and the muscle. That's in our terms, it's called the SMAS, S-M-A-S. And then you really need to move that choppy fat layer upwards, and you're either I tend I I'll honestly say to the patients, I'm hauling the mattress of your cheek up the hill of your cheekbone. I'm either throwing some ropes in the top of the mattress and dragging it up the hill, that's a stitch or smash type lift, or I'm going underneath the mattress, picking it up and then putting it on the hill. That's a deep plane lift. And I would argue that tying ropes on it and dragging it is not going to create as natural a result as me picking up and putting it. So I'm the deep plane facelift guy because I think that philosophy just creates a more natural result. So but that argument will go round and round and round and round in international meetings till the cows come home.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Yeah, wow. And one like you said, one doctor might be better at one procedure and like the chefs got their skills and what they do, but the flavour's still good.

SPEAKER_04 29:47

Aaron Powell That's true. And then to getting into that deep plane, you're you're you're not just scratching on the surface, you're you're way down in in the clockwork. Yeah. So you need a level of experience and a level of comfort in that space to be able to not find yourself getting into trouble, I think is part of it.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

So And I imagine the recovery for a deep plane is it because it's more invasive, you're going deeper.

SPEAKER_04 30:15

Oddly enough, it's it's possibly shorter than if you're in a more superficial layer. Oddly enough.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Really?

SPEAKER_04 30:21

Oddly enough. Yeah. Oddly enough. I tend to tell people that you will hide for two weeks. Uh you'll be out of the loop for two weeks, you'll be walking.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Do you still have the chin strap?

unknown 30:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:32

You're wearing that day and night for the first week.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:35

You're probably wearing it at night time for the second week, but you're probably still in the house. You're very functional. I mean, you're on the phone, you're on the laptop, you're running around doing stuff. You're just you're wearing a spunny type mask, so you're just not out at social functions. By two weeks, you should be walking out the door looking looking okay, but not looking your best, looking, you know, a little swollen like I've been to the dentist, you know, my hay fever's playing up. You'll think of a good excuse. And then by six weeks, you should be, I say you should be taking landmark family photos. So you should be walking down the aisle, turning up at major family reunions, taking photos that you would stick on the mantelpiece for the rest of your days. And then for mine, I want that result to be good for, you know, five minimum five closer to ten years.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

I feel like French women seem to do aging really well. I mean, damn. They do everything really well, don't they? I mean, I've written books about everything they do so well.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Yeah, they do.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Um because they have that approach, that less is more approach. Yeah that they still look natural and look like themselves. So do you think there's something in that philosophy?

SPEAKER_04 31:41

I think I think I think the the Europeans are far better at skincare than we are. Uh they're far better at uh less sun exposure. So it it is always interesting. As an Australian, you go to meetings and you know I present at international meetings and I'm presenting with, you know, the French and the British and the Americans and the Brazilian surgeons, and at the end of it, they all come up and they go, Oh, Dr. Jeremy, your patients they're very, very challenging, very challenging patients. I'm like, that's you know, that's called the Australian lifestyle. I mean if you think the women look bad, you should take a look at the guys who just had way too much sun exposure.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

You know, I used to model when I was younger, and I remember going for this, I think it was like a Japanese Pampa's Nappy commercial. And I was about 20 or even younger, and I had to play this mum, and they kept going down because I think they'd asked to have around the 30-year-old mark. Yes. And they were like, no, no, they look so old. We have to go younger. So I was like 18 doing this like Pampa's Nappy commercial running around with the toddler. But but it was interesting. I remember that staying with me. And I grew up in Queensland. Yeah, worshiping the sun is and and I look at my 15-year-old daughter now, there is still an element of sun worshiping in these young girls.

SPEAKER_04 32:57

And you look back, those days in the sun with the warm sun on your face is some of the best days of your life. It's just it's the the price that comes with that beautiful lifestyle that we have, and it's a fair balance. Whereas the Europeans, if it's 15 degrees and it's a hot sunny day and everyone's out sunbaking for those two days of the year, and the rest of the time everyone's rugged up indoors and their skin, their complexion is just a totally different, totally different animal to deal with.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Yeah. Well, they're getting dehydrated from the uh heating systems over there. So do you think social media has distorted people's perception of aging and cosmetic surgery?

SPEAKER_04 33:33

Yeah, 100%. The problem is social media, you don't know who's got a filter on, full stop. Yeah. So you go, you know, look at that before and that after photo. And we're slightly in tune with this, is that, you know, to make someone look less wrinkly, you turn the flash up. Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 33:51

Oh yeah, I've got a bright light right now on my face. So people looking probably going, God, wow, her skin looks so good. It's like I I need to put my sunnies on, it's so bright. There are tricks.

SPEAKER_04 34:00

So and that's that's just with a standard photo. That's let alone putting a filter on. So that um when when people want to show a dramatic result, they will tweak it to the point where they get a dramatic result. So that in our industry, in our publications, at our meetings, that's just not allowed. You're not allowed to do that. That's called deception, and you'll get that's unethical. But on the internet, it's it's it's a free-for-all. And then different countries particularly will have different rules and regulations about what's viable or not. And some of the images that pop up from some of the countries overseas on facelift, you just go, that's just that is AI'd to the absolute max. That person doesn't even look human anymore. They'll tout that as a great result, and some people might go down that that path. There's some very famous photos of a very famous mother who's got a couple of very famous daughters who had a very famous operation done.

SPEAKER_00 34:57

So I was about to touch on that.

SPEAKER_04 34:59

Yeah, her first photos were just, you know, her results were just phenomenal.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

Extraordinary. And that that's what then the swelling subsided.

SPEAKER_04 35:06

Yeah. And it even took it even took my wife to go, that's a filter. And I'm like, oh, yeah, it is too. Yeah. Yeah, I forgot about that. Because when you're looking, you're just like, that's amazing. And it is it is true that uh that result in the first three months you will look fantastic because of a degree of swelling. And then as the swelling goes, it's like letting the air out of the metaphorical balloon, and as the balloon sweaks a bit, it might get a few little creases in it. So there are changes at the three-month mark that won't be there at the 12-month mark. And people need to get their get their head around that, is people look great six weeks, three months after facelift, and then it will settle. And the settle is not a fail, it's just resolution of swelling.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

Yeah. And swelling would obviously be beneficial, I'd imagine, for a 50-plus woman. Oh, 100%. I look so plump and juicy.

SPEAKER_04 35:56

On the dewy like newborn baby. It's perfect.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

Yeah. So what's one thing you wish women would stop doing to their faces?

SPEAKER_04 36:06

Oh, if one cookie is good, it doesn't mean 10 is going to be better. So if you get your hand into the cookie jar of fillers, like lips are a classic. Like a little bit of filler. So as you as you age, you age, you age in three ways. So the quality of your skin deteriorates, uh, you lose volume, and then there's descent of tissue. So you can restore volume by putting volume in. So as you age, the lip tends to lose some volume, and putting a bit of volume in there is a good thing. It's going to be a favorable thing in terms of aesthetics. So if a little bit is good, it doesn't mean a lot is going to be better.

unknown 36:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:42

So once you've got your hand in the cookie jar, don't keep just going one more cookie, one more cookie, one more cookie. That's the one thing that I think people lose perspective. And they go from an aesthetic improvement past the aesthetic norm and then start heading off on a different tangent where they're heading off on some abnormal proportion, but things are just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

Because it lasts a long time. You know, people sometimes go back every few six months or whatever to get their lips done. It does hang around.

SPEAKER_04 37:13

It does hang around. So the problem was when the very, very first came out, we don't release things on the public without appropriate trials and testing. So the testing was done of this hyaluronic acid filler, which is a copy of a carbohydrate that's in your own body. So your body should see it as your own tissue and dissolve it. That's that's the premise. So and then the studies were done putting the filler into the skin, the skin layer of animals, and it dissolved it in said 12 months. Uh we then started putting the filler under the skin layer where there's less blood flow, and we now know that it will not necessarily dissolve in 12 months. So if you're going every 12 months, you might have 20% left, and then you add another 20 and 20, 20, 20. So there are people who do do have a lot of filler that has theoretically meant to have dissolved, that has not dissolved, that then just starts to accumulate, and you can end up with people with crazy big cheeks. And then the other thing is because it's soft, it tends to almost flow like honey might flow. It's very slow, but it does move, and of course it moves down, so we end up with more volume down here. So overdoing the wrong tool is a bad idea. So using fillers appropriately is good, but overcooking it is not great. That's one of our bugbears.

SPEAKER_00 38:32

Yeah. So back to the facelifts. How painful is a recovery out of ten?

SPEAKER_04 38:40

Uh oddly enough, one or two. So recovery, recovery after a facelift is it's pretty straightforward. Things hurt when they when they're when they're moving. If you break a bone and it's wobbling, it hurts. So the first thing we do is we put a plaster on it, we stop it wobbling, and that relieves a lot of the pain. So the pain from a facelift is things are not moving once we're finished. It just feels awkwardly tight. So people say, I just feel really tight and flue and stuffy. So pain is not so bad. It's more or less like a tight discomfort. And then that's helped by the first couple of days resting upwards and not lying down flat. So I tend to say if you hit your thumb with a hammer, it feels better if you hold it up. So if you're upright, you'll feel better than if you're lying down flat.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

And what are the scars like? And how long do they take to soften?

SPEAKER_04 39:39

The scars are the bugbear. Every time you get in, you have to get out, so there's going to be a scar somewhere. Um the scars we're trying to hide. We're trying to hide them potentially in hairlines, in skin creases in front of ears, behind ears, down on hairlines. If there's a neck lift, it might involve an incision underneath the chin, uh, behind the shadow line. And then the scars should be as fine as possible. So a scar will depend on three things. It's going to depend on the technician who did the suturing, and we shouldn't we should all know as plastic surgeons what we're doing. We should be doing good technique. It's then going to depend on the patient's biology. So some people will innately scar better than others. We like to grade things. So blonde hair, blue eyes is a grade one Fitzpatrick skin type. As we go down darker skin types, we get to a five. So someone with dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin will innately scar worse than someone with blonde hair and blue eyes. And then there are things we can do after the operation to try and speed up and minimize the scarring process. So we're into massage and silicon and needling and all sorts of different options. But in essence, once the incision's there, the scar will be there. It will be there permanently. The trick is to get the finest scar possible, to hide it as much as possible. It will go through a phase where it's sort of thicker and redder, and it gets thicker and redder up to about six to twelve weeks, and then it starts to fade and become finer, and then 12 months is the ultimate final result. At which point I'm looking for something that you really can't see unless you go looking for it. So if someone's at at speed moving normally, you're never going to see that scar. If your hairdresser pulls every single hair back individually, you may be able to see it. That's that's the sort of result we're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 41:30

What tends to surprise women most once they've had the surgery?

SPEAKER_04 41:36

That's a good question. Um I think it's I didn't there's a lot of I didn't realise. I didn't realise that this was something I didn't like. I'll get a lot of I really don't like. So it you know, more more throwaway catch lines in our business is like nine times out of ten it's the neck, not the face, that's the problem, and women know that. So that most people will come saying, I want to do something about my neck. And then you'll go, okay, well, do your neck, but at the same time we can do the lower face, and I don't want to see you in two years to do the lower face, so we'll do them both together. One operation, one downtime, see you in ten years. And they'll often come back going, I just didn't even realize that this was such a big concern of mine and such a big difference is I've got my jawline back. And they're like, I've got my jawline back. Like I thought I'd hated this, but god, oh god, I love this. So that that's always really pleasing when you get those sorts of results.

SPEAKER_00 42:37

Oh, I wish I had done it earlier. Why did I wait so long?

SPEAKER_04 42:40

Oh, you get a lot of that. A lot. So when's the when's the right time? The right time is when when it starts preying on your mind, I think, is to go and start asking questions. And we do we do know that people will probably start looking on the internet, and it's probably 12 to 18 months of looking before they'll end up in the office. And then after I think the hardest part's picking up the telephone, actually. And I say that to all my patients. They're like, they're like, you're right. The hard part, the hard part was picking up the telephone and making the appointment. Now I'm here, it's so much less confrontational and scary than I thought it was going to be. It's actually pretty straightforward. I'm like, it's very straightforward. I mean, we go at your pace. I'm not doing something that I don't think is in your best interest. I'm not doing something that I don't think you have a complete, absolute understanding of. And once we have those hurdles jumped, then we might be ready for some surgical procedure. Uh and it's more than just an operation, it's from the point of contact all the way through for 12 months. The right time's the right time. And it's usually a lot of thinking about it before they get to me.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

And like you said, knowledge is power, right? So if they're coming in, they're like, oh my God, it's so big, it's so big. I don't know. It's like it's too much, too much. And then once they have the information, they're informed. Absolutely. They're like, oh, okay, right. No, I understand. Everything's clear now. So then they can make the informed decision.

SPEAKER_04 44:07

Totally. And people people will come in and going, I I need a vertical restore lift. I'm like, okay, well, you can go to the guy who names the vertical restore lift and I need this. I need the oper I need this guy's operation. It's like, well, you can go to that guy if you want to. We we do something similar, it's just that he's patented that term, and then clearing all of that noise around the best procedure in the world is part of the whole process of getting people to the point where they go, okay, this is a good plan, and this plan is good for me because I'm different from that person. And that's the foundation for a successful result.

SPEAKER_00 44:41

Yeah. I wanted to touch back on the lip lift only because I'm curious.

SPEAKER_03 44:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:47

But is that a common procedure that people have where you make the incision under the nose and it you hook the lip line up? Because you can get longer in the lip, right? Longer in that. Like like Homer Simpson, that kind of look. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:01

So here's here's a good story for you. So there's a there's a guy, there's a guy in the States who I I used to work with when I was over there who came up with a 3D camera, and every time we had a big international American meeting, he would do 3D scans of anyone who wanted to have a 3D scan. So as the years went by, he started getting multiple 3D scans of the same people, and he did it for about 15 years. And then he looked at the changes in the aging process on everybody, and the one biggest variable that came with age was lengthening of the top lip. Isn't that insane?

SPEAKER_01 45:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:36

And then boom, he comes up with his publication. He's got beautiful 3D graphics of it, and you're like, oh my goodness, how did we not see this? So then, of course, lip lift became this buzz term. And it's true, your top lip gets longer as you get older. Uh, you lose height in the pink part of the lip, and the white part gets longer, and you lose the little flash of teeth when you're talking. And the trick is to lift the garage door up uh and do it enough to get the proportions back without overcooking it so that you look a bit like a rabbit. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 46:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 46:16

So and then it becomes very interesting. So if I talk to my colleagues who work in New York, they're like, there's a certain proportion and a certain height that goes with a lip lift. I talk to my colleagues in LA, they've got a totally different aesthetic going on, where it's like, no, that's not enough. We've got to go go hard. And their look would be unacceptable in New York. And then Australia sort of sits somewhere between New York and LA.

unknown 46:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:41

But a liplift is a good procedure. Relatively straightforward, often then combined at the same time as some other facial surgery, and it makes a big difference. Done well. It makes a very big difference.

SPEAKER_00 46:52

Interesting. And the downtime?

SPEAKER_04 46:54

Well, we're going to have some stitches that need to come out at a week. So you're probably out of the loop for a week, but after that, you're pretty much out the door. But I tend to always say two weeks just in case someone gets a bruise or something that holds them back. So almost everything is two weeks, two weeks. Good photos, six weeks, six weeks.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

Gotcha. So I wanted to talk about the risks and what can go wrong.

SPEAKER_04 47:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 47:17

So what can go wrong in vaselift surgery?

SPEAKER_04 47:21

So there I have this conversation with the patients. All surgery's got risks and downsides. And then my job is to minimize the the potential downsides and potential risks. So in surgery, I tend to think about the good, the good, the bad, and the ugly. So to put it really simply, I want good. I want a good result. You know, you're in, you're out, you're happy, I'm happy, we're done. That's good. Bad is that bad things can happen, but they're fixable. So into that category, we have problems with bleeding, and then we have problems with infections, and we need antibiotics, and then one scar may not be as good as the other one. We do a small scar revision, but it's it's bad, but it's it it's all fixable. Then we get into the ugly, and ugly just can't happen. So we don't do operations necessarily in the back of the office. We don't do them on a Friday afternoon. We are going to a real hospital with a real anaesthetist, and we're going to do this once, and we do it properly, because there are some ugly things that can happen. And Australia's not a third world country. So let's not do third world medicine. Let's do first world medicine and do things safely and properly. But there are certainly stories out there, and the internet's great for two things. It's great for the best of and the worst of. So you will see the best of the facelift and you'll see the worst of the worst. So you know, there's pulling on skin, there's blood flow in skin, there can be skin loss problems, uh, there's nerves that go to muscles, and they're like fiber optic cables, and if they get cut, then we lose power to muscles, and we can have all sorts of problems that in well-trained hands done properly in a real hospital really shouldn't happen. But everyone needs to think about it and everyone needs to know every patient needs to know about it because I also say to the patients that, you know, although the chances of this happening are 0.00001%, if it happens to you, it's 100% your problem. And then it falls on the practitioner, well, what am what am I gonna do about it if I don't have an outcome that's perfect? Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna fix it. I'm gonna go hell in high water to get that person who's gone off track back on track as quickly as we can, and you know, get them the result that you know we had a verbal agreement that we're gonna try and get to. So we're in Australia we're very, very lucky that we have certain medical standards, we have certain medical boards, we have certain societies with codes of conduct and codes of ethics. And I think that's the thing that you get in Australia that you may not get in some other countries. So surgery from other countries is a bit of a bug bear for us because this the duty of care is not there. The outcome is not just an operation, it's the discussion, it's the operation, it's the aftercare. So jumping on a plane, flying across to somewhere, flying home, being a heck of a long way from your doctor if you think there's a problem is is really quite challenging for some patients. And they can find themselves in a bit of a pickle, um, and getting out of that pickle can be somewhat challenging as well.

SPEAKER_01 50:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:35

So I'm I'm very big on high standard of care, informed consent, ethical practice and just maximizing results. But people they do need to be aware that in the wrong hands, things can not go as planned.

SPEAKER_00 50:51

Yeah. So how important is someone's emotional state and expectations going into surgery?

SPEAKER_04 50:58

Oh, massively important. So there's a I mean, we we know psychologically that after surgery there's a there's a massive outpouring of emotion in the sense that like it's almost like the baby blues in the sense that nine months has gone into this moment that's coming, and then this moment happens, and then all of a sudden we're done.

SPEAKER_02 51:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:19

And there can be a bit of a bit of an emotional downturn. So that we're very, we're very ready for that. We're totally ready for that. And then someone's not coming from an emotionally stable foundation, they're very vulnerable to finding themselves on the other side going, you know, oh my God, what have I done? This is I I what have I done? I want I want to reverse this. Uh and that's that's not a good place for anyone to be in. So we're very big on just psychological screening before procedures to make sure people are in the right place. And if we see something that I think might be a red flag psychologically, then it's as important to me as a red flag anatomically. And there'll be cases where you just go, look, at this particular time, this is not the right decision for you. We need to just tweak a few things a little bit. So if someone comes in and their blood pressure is too high, I'll send them to a cardiologist. And if their blood sugar is too high, I'll send them to an endocrinologist. And if their mental state is not ready, I'll send them to a psychologist.

SPEAKER_01 52:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:24

So that everyone is all on the same page and everyone's ready for the emotional roller coaster, the big surgical procedure can be.

SPEAKER_00 52:32

Yeah, that's good practice. And I and I just think there's probably still some shame that women carry around fixing themselves, right? And inverted commas, because uh and then you you think about your belief systems around aging. I mean, there's so many different layers to how one might feel before the surgery and after surgery. Yes. I'd imagine it would be an emotional ride, regardless of whether you have poor mental health or not.

SPEAKER_04 53:00

100%.

SPEAKER_00 53:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:01

You know, there's there's there's uh and there's mother guilt. Mother guilt is Mother Guilt. I know mother guilt well.

SPEAKER_00 53:09

It's like It's a real thing.

SPEAKER_04 53:11

Yeah, I know. It's not about it's not about me, it's all about the kids. It's always been about the kids. So now it's about me. I feel really bad about it. It's like you shouldn't feel bad about it. Your kids are fine about it. You're just not feeling good about it. Um and that's a real entity, and we face that a lot. So there's a lot there's a lot more to a good surgical outcome than an operation. Put it that way.

SPEAKER_00 53:34

Yeah. Yeah. Would you ever have a facelift?

SPEAKER_04 53:37

Um I don't know. I don't know. People ask me, and I don't know. It's a time or place thing. I think they're I think they're great at satisfying individual patients' needs and concerns. I may get there. I'm not sure. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 53:52

Do m do men get them? Is it common that a lot of men get them?

SPEAKER_04 53:56

So honestly, about one in about one in ten, ten percent of any practice is going to be male. So about one in ten of my facelift patients are gonna be male. And it's it's often, you know, lived a hed a hard lived a hard physical life or a hard outdoor life, and you know, not as young as I I'm feeling young and sporty and fit, but I'm just not seeing myself in the mirror. So it's exactly the same sort of psychology and concerns. But yeah, about one in ten patients is gonna be male.

SPEAKER_00 54:26

Interesting. And I wanted to touch on as well. I know some people listening to this might go, oh, it's all very good and well if you've got money and you can afford to do these things. And like anything in life, you invest your money where you see it is valuable. Right. So I I certainly don't want there to be any judgment. This is a personal decision for a lot of people. But there are things that you can do in order to have great skin and structure throughout your life. It just comes down to maintenance with anything, right?

SPEAKER_04 54:56

100%. And then something something like a facelift, you do need to maintain your skin. I can't I I can move structures and reposition things, but I can't change the cells in your skin. But you can. You can, you know, stop the ongoing damage by staying out of ultraviolet light, so hats and sunscreens essential. You can use a skincare program that'll actually reverse some of the sun damage. There's definitely there's definitely ways non-surgically to rejuvenate the face. Absolutely. Um and they're sometimes they're a lot easier and a lot more accessible. Sometimes they they definitely couple with surgery to get the best result possible. But I'm with you. It's like different horses for different courses. Some people need a Harley Davidson, some people want a jet ski, some people want something surgical. It's not my place to That's right.

SPEAKER_00 55:50

Make judgment.

SPEAKER_04 55:51

Make judgment on what each person does and doesn't want.

SPEAKER_00 55:54

Yeah. And if someone listening is considering a facelift but feels unsure or overwhelmed, what advice would you give them?

SPEAKER_04 56:04

I mean, go and go and speak to a professional. It's going to take about 45 minutes out of your time as a consultation fee, undoubtedly, but it will clarify what all of the noise out there means in your circumstance. It'll distill down what everyone's talking about how that applies to you. And I would I would go to a fully qualified surgeon, the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons, we all uphold a code of ethics, we will steer people down the right path, you know, with their best interests at heart. And that is often what people just need. They just go, okay, now I've got a grip on it. Because everyone out there is a little quite often a self-appointed, poorly informed expert. Uh so friends are giving you advice, and then this person's giving you advice, and then chat rooms are full of advice. It's like how that advice applies to you specifically can only really come from someone who has a a complete understanding of all the options. And that that you can find from a good plastic surgeon.

SPEAKER_00 57:07

Good advice. And is there anything we're missing today? Is there anything we haven't touched on that you feel like it needs to be shared?

SPEAKER_04 57:16

I think we're doing pretty well. I think we've covered it a lot. I could talk about this for like forever.

SPEAKER_00 57:23

Well, it's it's certainly been a ride. I've I've found it really interesting. There are questions that I've been wanting to know as a 50-year-old woman. Um so, and I think most of my friends we are curious about it. So it's nice to get this information. So I want to finish with a moment of reconnection. And I know in the in our last in part one, you've answered them, so I've shaken them up this time.

SPEAKER_04 57:45

This is always fun.

SPEAKER_00 57:47

What do you think people are really searching for when it comes to aging well?

SPEAKER_04 57:54

A long time in the summer of their life. That's what they're after. They're after we've all got memories of you know that day, and that day is obviously in the past. And that was a great day, and I want to have that day again and again and again and again. And we're we're trying to maximize the good days. The days when you get that great vibe when you just go, you know what? That was great. That's what I think people are looking for. People are looking to be their their best selves and not be someone different, but just be the best version of themselves.

SPEAKER_00 58:29

Yeah. Has your perspective on beauty changed after years of working in this field?

SPEAKER_04 58:37

Yes, yes, it has. There's there's structural guidelines to beauty. There are numbers and there are rulers and there are angles and distances, and they do apply. But then you know, the concept that beauty comes from within is absolutely true. Is that someone who has a certain joie de vie walks into a room with a certain air of lightness and happiness and smile, that's that's that's the attractive person in the room. And that's got nothing to do with numbers and angles and distances. And that's uh that often is what surgery will do as well. It will many times you'll make a change in someone anatomically, but it's the change that occurs psychologically for them that then lets them flourish and out they come, and you just go, poof. You are like a totally different person. And you are you are glowing, and that is to me a beautiful result.

SPEAKER_00 59:40

That just reminded me of a girl I used to model with in Brisbane many, many years ago. I've even forgotten her name, but she was flat-chested and had sort of a pixie haircut, was very shy, really pretty, but just very awkward. And then she went and got her boobs done. Not huge, but got herself a good pair of boobs and it just off she went. Transformation, not in just how she looked, but it was her confidence and how much she elevated. And so obviously, not having boobs had impacted her her whole life, right? Might not have impacted me the way it impacted her, but it impacted her. And it's like when people go and have a nose job, every day they're living with their nose that they can't stand, right? So I just think, you know, we shouldn't be judging these people that want to make these decisions.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:32

I'll give you a great story to finish on. So one of the best ones, I do a lot of rhinoplastys. And you take an 18, 19-year-old girl who is quiet, introverted, and super shy, and mum or mum, usually mum will bring her in. We're talking about rhinoplasty. Dad invariably comes in, he's like, Don't you be spoiling my beautiful little princess. Don't you be she's she's beautiful the way she is. And then you will do this operation. And they'll come back for follow-up, and he just goes, I cannot thank you enough. You have transformed her. I'm like, no. All I did was change her nose. And they're like, No, no, she's outgoing and she's fun and she's having a great life. And I'm like, Yeah, it was always in there. She was just held back. She just needed that little step forward. And that that is a that's a great thing to be able to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:22

And you know, and some may argue that that there's that self-acceptance piece, and sure, you know, there are elements of that with anything in life. But I just think if there's something, there's subtle changes that you want to make in your personality. I mean, we do it with makeup.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:35

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:36

People wear a lot of makeup at times, you know, there's enhancing or taking away from or doing whatever. So I just think there are so many different layers to it.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:46

It is good. It's fun. It's it's a it's it is interesting to work around those layers and find out if you can tap into the right layer that needs to be changed to get that result, then that's the art behind the science that then creates good outcomes for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:08

Well said. Dr. Jeremy Hunt, thank you so much for such an honest, grounded conversation around a topic that so many women are thinking about, you often feel nervous to ask openly. I think this episode really helps cut through the noise and fear that surround cosmetic surgery and aging. Whether someone chooses to have a facelift or not, I think the most important takeaway for today is that aging well doesn't mean chasing perfection. It's about feeling informed, feeling confident, and ultimately still feeling like yourself.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:40

100%. Absolutely. Well said, Tracy. Well said.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:44

Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:45

My pleasure, my pleasure. It's been great.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:52

Thank you for joining me on Inside Out Connections. I hope today's conversation reminds you to tune in and find small ways to self-reconnect. If this episode resonated, please share it with a friend or leave a quick review. Come join me on Instagram at insideout skin gutcoach.